Laser pods mounted on drones to shoot down missiles. Yeah, that's science fiction warfare, right there. And that's exactly what the US military wants. The US just gave Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman contracts to develop aircraft-mounted laser weapons to protect drones from getting hit by missiles. Or create a flock of drones that can form a shield with lasers.

DARPA said engineers had been working to develop "scalable laser weapons that are 10 times lighter and more compact than existing high-power chemical laser systems." Making lasers like that isn't exactly easy and mounting them to flying aircrafts makes it even harder but... it's so much cooler.